I know why I'm good at this now

Back in 1993 a buddy of mine introduced me to my first RTS game - Dune 2. It was the predecessor of the Command and Conquer series... flawed in some respects, but the Dune engine itself was years ahead of it's time. In any case, I ended up spending hours and hours at a time staring at brightly colored little units on a screen doing this and that - whatever I wanted them to do, really - while enemy folk tried to blow up my work. At it's core, it boiled down to how quickly I could manufacture good guys and tell them to shoot at the bad guys. If I hit the ground running and got a good start, I won. If I didn't, I didn't.

It occurred to me that what I do today is largely the same thing. I spend my day staring at brightly colored little rectangles on a screen that represent people answering phones, email, and envelope items - or whatever I want them to do, really - while enemy folk (a.k.a. "members") try to either destroy our work or bog down my team. At it's core, it boils down to how quickly we can manufacture good guys and put them in place to handle the load. If we hit the ground running and get a good start, we win. If we don't, I'm fired.

Today General Patton himself couldn't have managed the war on the phones any better. Five people called in to start the morning. Short on captains (supervisors). Veteran employees performing less than efficiently. Key pieces of software going haywire. Over 22,000 new compromised cards. Credit cards being mysteriously reissued and cross-branded unbeknownst to the department that handles such things. Increased Monday call volume. Preparing more troops to switch to a new system without personel from Training. What, is that a bad day? Hmmm...lemme just move some of these brightly colored rectangles where they need to be, and move this back here, and put that over there, and...yup, there we go! Just as my boss sat down with his boss and his boss' boss to discuss the situation, the queue was cleared. "What back log of calls?"

I hear it's good to make your boss look good, and I owe it to Westwood Studios.